On 21 May 1943, Rolf Günther, Adolf Eichmann’s deputy in Department IVB4, informed all local police headquarters that Heinrich Himmler had ordered to complete all deportations of Jews from the Greater Reich and the Protectorate to the East and to Theresienstadt by 30 June 1943. The new regulations included several groups of Jews whose deportation was postponed until then. This included sick and infirm Jews, Jews who were still employed in slave labor for the war industry, employees of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden (Reich's Association of the Jews in Germany). The only exemptions were Jews married to non-Jews. The regulations also gave guidelines for the procedure of the deportation. In case of smaller deportations up to 400 Jews, special cars, connected to regular trains, were to be used.
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In June 1943 the city of Berlin was officially declared “free of Jews” ("judenrein"). 9,529 Jews (according to the Nuremberg laws definition) remained in Germany. 6,790 resided in Berlin. Most of them were spouses in mixed marriages, Jews of mixed ancestry and Jewish community personnel that worked in the Jewish hospital. In addition, more than 2000 Jews were living in hiding.
On 10 June 1943, the Nazi authorities had officially closed the "Reich's Association of the Jews in Germany" (Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland) and its offices in Oranienburger Strasse and Kantstrasse. All financial and property assets were confiscated. The only exemption was the Jewish hospital, directed by Walter Lustig, at Iranische Strasse 2-4 in Berlin-Wedding and its adjacent nursing homes, which from March 1944 served as sole assembly camp, prison, children’s home and hospital.
This transport departed from Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin on 4 August 1943 and arrived in Theresienstadt in the early evening of the same day. The transport consisted of 70 Jews, of whom 36 were women and 34 were men. The average age of the deportees was 40.8. The youngest of them was an infant, less than a year old and the oldest was aged 85. Four of the deportees were under 12, four of them were between the ages of 13 and 18, thirty-four of them were between 19 and 45, seventeen were between 46 and 60, and eleven of the deportees were between the ages of 61 and 85.
Although the city of Berlin had been declared "Free of Jews", the Gestapo continued to search for and arrest individual Jews that met the criteria for deportation. The deportees were brought to the assembly site, where they were detained until a larger group of Jews was assembled and the Reichsbahn had supplied one or two railway cars for their transport.
On the day of the transport, the deportees had to leave the assembly camp in Grosse Hamburger Strasse. They were taken to Anhalter Bahnhof located on Schöneberger Strasse or to another spot along the adjoining tracks. There they were ordered to board one or two old third-class rail cars, which were connected to a regular train that left the station for Dresden. In Dresden the cars with the Jews were connected to another regular train headed for Prague.
The train's route took the deportees from Berlin to Dresden and along the river Elbe to Decin (Tetschen), Usti nad Labem (Aussig), Bohusovice (Bauschowitz) and finally to Theresienstadt. From 1 June 1943 on the trains went directly into the ghetto, as the prisoners had built a connecting railway line from Bauschowitz station to Theresienstadt. The transport was given the reference I/100 in the Theresienstadt ghetto listings, where the Roman numeral I refers to Berlin. In Theresienstadt many of the elderly Jewish deportees who had arrived on these transports died of hunger and disease during the following months. Others were later transferred to extermination camps in the East, where they were murdered.
According to historian Rita Meyhöfer, 21 deportees from this transport are known to have survived.
This was the 100th of 123 transports from Berlin to Theresienstadt during the war that were made up mainly of elderly Jewish deportees (Alterstransporte).
Testimony by Edith Kramer
"The next day I was taken out of prison and brought to the assembly camp on Grosse Hamburgerstrasse, again with the “Green Minna” [prisoner transport]. This camp, a former school, consisted of two sections: all those headed for Theresienstadt were on one floor, and all those headed to the east were on the other. I was brought into that last section, and everything I still had was taken away from me […]
During my stay at Grosse Hamburgerstrasse I met a married couple, Mr. and Mrs. May, former patients from Berlin [...] they told me of a way to be sent to Theresienstadt instead of the east where the accomodation was supposed to be much better. They told me that they themselves had managed to buy their freedom with the help of a corrupt Gestapo officer, and they were headed for Sweden; they were to be released on that day.
I gave them the name and address of my sister in Berlin, and they promised to help me with the same arrangement. My sister was holding on to some of my money, and was therefore able to pay my ransom. Sure enough, the lawyer Dr. Jacobson came to me the night before the transport. He told me that he had come to help me, that I should go with him to the Head of the Gestapo, and let him answer any questions. The Head of the Gestapo was called Duberkel [Walter Dobberke]. He asked where my husband was, and Dr. Jacobson answered. He said that my husband had succumbed to the wounds he received during the first world war and for which he had been decorated with the first and second class Iron Cross. I did not have any children. As to my profession, he replied truthfully that I was a physician.
Duberkel asked how may people were on the transport to Theresienstadt and Dr. Jacobson said: 59. Duberkel then said: “Good, let’s make it a round number.“This is how I went to Theresienstadt instead of to the east. This was transport I A 100 that consisted of the medical personnel of the Jewish hospital."
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